Recipe Substitutions for Cooking Emergencies

Say you're making a vinaigrette dressing for a salad and suddenly realize that you're out of vinegar. You do have lemons, which are an acceptable substitute, but how much lemon do you use? Or maybe you don't have whole milk for a gratin dish, but you do have skim milk. Is skim milk okay? Situations like these are what the following recipe substitutions are all about.

Some ingredients are almost always interchangeable: For example, you can substitute vegetable or olive oil in most cases for butter when sautéing or pan frying; lemon juice for vinegar in salad dressings and marinades; almonds for walnuts in baked breads and muffins; vegetable stock for beef or chicken stock in soups, stews, or sauces; and light cream for half-and-half.

But sometimes there is no acceptable substitution for an ingredient. Other times, the substitution is very exact and specific. This is most often the case for baked goods, where you need to follow a formula to produce a cake, soufflé, pastry, or bread with the perfect height, density, and texture.

Most of the following substitutions are for emergency situations only — when you have run out of an essential ingredient and need a very specific replacement.